WUNRN
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty - http://www.rferl.org/media/video/afghan-refugees-leave-pakistan/27210136.html
Website Link Includes VIDEO.
More Afghan Refugees Prepare to Leave Pakistan – Women & Children
26
August 2015 - More than 200 Afghan refugees in Pakistan prepare to return home
under the UN's Voluntary Repatriation Program.
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PAKISTAN - FACING HARASSMENT AFTER PAKISTAN SCHOOL ATTACK, THOUSANDS OF AFGHAN REFUGEES FLEE THEIR PAKISTAN HOMES
In thisMarch 11, 2015 photo, an Afghan refugee family return to Afghanistan through Pakistan's border crossing, Torkham, east of Kabul, Afghanistan. Since January, almost 50,000 Afghan families have passed through Torkham, double the amount of all refugees returning through the border town in 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration. Many say they fled Pakistan over increased harassment by police who told them to return to Afghanistan, a country many have never even seen, putting new pressure on both countries to find solutions to the decades-old flow of refugees. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul) (The Associated Press)
Afghan Analysts Network
Refugee Dilemma: Afghans in Pakistan Between Expulsion & Failing
Aid Schemes
By Christine Roehrs – 9 March 2015
Afghan
returnees crossing the border at Torkham in Nangrahar province. Photo: Press TV
Nearly
52,000 Afghans living in Pakistan have, within the past ten weeks, packed their
belongings and crossed the border back into Afghanistan – more than twice as
many as in the whole 12 months of 2014. This started after an attack of
Pakistani Taleban on a public army school in Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
province, on 16 December, killing 132 children and at least nine adults. The
attack had allegedly been planned in Afghanistan and there were rumours that
Afghans might have been among the facilitators. This compelled the Pakistani
government to include the repatriation of refugees in its new anti-terrorism
action plan and to launch operations in Afghan neighbourhoods and refugees
camps. At the same time, the countdown is running on the validity of the ID
cards that allows registered refugees to stay in Pakistan. AAN’s Christine
Roehrs has been looking into the current politics around Afghan refugees in
Pakistan. She also looks at what fate awaits the returnees in their home
country and finds there is not much of a welcome here either.
Humanitarian
workers have described the returnees coming on foot, bundles over their
shoulders, or in large trucks, rented together with other families, with dozens
of people squeezed in the back and around them, boxes, mattresses and suitcases
piled high. Theirs were hasty decampments, driven by anxiety and pressure
exerted by the Pakistani authorities. Returnees (if that is the correct word to
also include those who were born and have grown up in Pakistan) have told
stories of house raids, eviction notices, landlords being asked not to extend
rental agreements and extortion. Breadwinners of families had been taken into
custody, with police telling their relatives they would get them back as soon
as they showed up with all their belongings packed and ready to leave the
country immediately.
The
numbers of Afghans coming across the border has fallen back since, from more
than 7800 in the first week of February – the peak of the returnee wave – to
more than 5400 in the last week of February (for detailed figures see (1)).
However, this sudden mass exodus was not a freak occurrence. It is result of a
fundamentally changed stance of Pakistan towards the Afghans the country has
been hosting for more than three decades, and it is possible that there is
no going back to the previous way of handling what the UN calls one of “the
largest protracted refugee communities in the world.” About 2.6 million Afghans
live in Pakistan today.
The
on-goings of the past ten weeks have also made clear that the Afghan refugees
in Pakistan need more than just humanitarian help. This includes tackling a
huge, still unaddressed issue: the difference in the protection and treatment
of the registered the 1.6 million refugees and the undocumented Afghans
living in Pakistan (estimated
at around one million). While the registered refugees in Pakistan are,
somewhat, protected from deportation and have the UN’s refugee agency UNHCR
lobbying for them, there is no one speaking on behalf of the unregistered
Afghans. Police raids against them are continuing, still driving more than 500
people across the border and into Afghanistan every day.
On this
side of the border, however, the state seems increasingly less able to deal
with this large category of citizens that is only likely to grow in
2015. This is partly also due to the reduction of aid money. International
agencies themselves have less to spend as the crises in Iraq and Syria are
eating away on their funds. And the Afghan government, suffering from massive
budget problems,
too, has slashed its development budget for the Ministry of Refugees and
Repatriation from 1.2 million dollars in 2014 to 250,000 dollars this year.
What has
happened – and how is it influencing Afghan-Pakistani relations?
What has
happened, rather unnoticed at first, but swiftly, is that the Pakistani
government, on 25 December 2014, on day nine after the Peshawar school attack,
announced a new anti-terrorism
action plan. The second-to-last of the 20 points was “the
repatriation of Afghan refugees.” (Other measures included special courts for
the speedy trial of terrorists, the formation of a special anti-terrorism
force, the regularisation of madrassas and eliminating space for terrorists in
media.) The plan did not distinguish between registered, ‘protected’ refugees
and undocumented Afghans, causing, in the following weeks, much indiscriminate
action against both groups. It also reinforced anti-Afghan feelings that, in
some parts of society, had been there before. In the province where the attack
took place, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Chief Minister Pervez Khattak had already, on
19 December 2014, three days after the attack, convened “an emergency cabinet
meeting to demand the immediate removal of all Afghan refugees.” He justified
this by saying the attack had been planned in Afghanistan.
At the
time of the announcement of the anti-terrorism plan, Prime Minister Nawaz
Sharif did not explain why he had included the repatriation of Afghans. Afghan
officials told AAN bitterly it had been “an attempt to deflect the blame for
the Pakistani security failure.” A Human Rights Watch statement
from 22 February, too, demanded “Pakistani officials should not be scapegoating
Afghans because of the Taliban’s atrocities in Peshawar.” It is unclear,
though, if there was more than just an attempt to shift the blame. AAN was told
by a Pakistani source with an ear close to both the federal government and that
of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province that, early on, there had been indications that
some Afghan refugees had indeed had a part in the attack, helping, for example,
to facilitate access to the school. Pakistani army spokesman Asim Bajwa did confirm in a press
briefing on 12 February that although “most of the plotters were Pakistani
nationals,” the attack had been planned in Afghanistan, leaving the impression
some of the plotters might have been Afghans.
The
Pakistani media quickly picked up on the suspicions, repeating them with often
unclear sourcing. A 23 December report, for example, said
that “six attackers have been identified, of which two are Afghan nationals,
two residents of Khyber Agency and the other two hail from Swat.” Another
outlet reported arrests of “Afghan canteen staffers”; weapons had
been stashed in the school’s canteen days before the attackers entered the
school, it said. None of these ‘facts’, however, were confirmed by government
sources.
What is
publicly known is that the mastermind
behind the mass murder was Mullah Fazlullah, leader of the (since split) (2)
Pakistani Taleban umbrella organisation Tehrik-e Taleban-e Pakistan (TTP) (he
claimed responsibility
for the attack on 17 December), and that he is currently suspected of hiding in
Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan. Altogether, 27 men have been identified
as having been involved in the attack. Nine of them, said army spokesman Asim
Bajwa on 12 February, have already been killed, including the attackers
themselves. Six had been arrested in Pakistan and six in Afghanistan. Six were
still at large at the time of the briefing.
It was
also the fact that Fazlullah is likely to be in Afghanistan and six other
suspected perpetrators have already been arrested here that has compelled
Pakistan to improve relations with Kabul. The six arrested in Afghanistan still
seem to be in the custody of the Afghan National Security Directorate (NDS),
with no information available if they are Afghan or Pakistani. It is likely
that the handover of these suspects was also among the topics discussed during
the visit of army chief Raheel Sharif to Kabul on Tuesday, 17 February, his
third since the attack (the first had taken place just one day after the
Peshawar attack). He was accompanied by the new head of the Pakistani
intelligence agency ISI, Rizwan Akhtar, who, too, had come to Kabul previously.
Both saw President Ghani and CEO Abdullah and again requested the fast
capture of Mullah Fazlullah.
For now,
both sides seem to find each other useful. Seldom have Pakistani officials said
so many nice things about Afghanistan. (3) The need for cooperation may have
even handed the Afghan government some leverage over the Pakistani state to
address the refugee issue and prevent further deportations or ‘repatriation.’
Anyhow, the inclusion of the Afghan refugees in the anti-terrorism action plan
has created some urgency. More meetings have been scheduled. The new Afghan
minister for refugees and repatriation, Sayed Hussain Alemi Balkhi, has arrived
in Pakistan two days ago, on 8 March. First thing, he addressed a large
gathering of refugee elders in Islamabad. A “comprehensive repatriation
strategy” will be prepared, he promised, and that a “13 member
committee under the leadership of President Ghani” would be
formed to supervise the progress. Balkhi will also meet with Pakistan’s foreign
policy advisor Sartaj Aziz and the Minister for States and Frontier Regions,
Abdul Qadir Baloch. Quasi-prime minister Abdullah Abdullah, too, recently
announced that he would be traveling
to Islamabad to discuss the fate of the Afghan refugees. From Pakistan, Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa’s chief minister is expected to visit Kabul in March.
The
registered Afghan refugees: identity cards running out and ‘refugee fatigue’
Two
issues will be on the agenda during these meetings. One is the fate of the registered
refugees. Their so-called PoR (Proof of Registration) cards that officially
allow them to stay in Pakistan, are only valid until the end of 2015. So far,
there is conflicting news about what will happen to them then.
On 7
January, Pakistan’s minister of frontier regions and the minister of defence,
along with the interior ministers of all four provinces and officials from the
intelligence agencies decided
that the permission to stay for Afghan refugees would end on 31 December 2015.
Eight weeks later, probably helped by the awareness that the slightly improved
relations with Afghanistan would come crashing down again if the country’s weak
economy and barely existing social services had to face the return of hundreds
of thousands of poor Afghans, the mood has slightly changed. “The Pakistanis
are more flexible now than they were a month ago,” Afghan refugees minister
Balkhi confirmed in an interview with AAN in mid-February. He noted that the Pakistani
government, after some Afghan and international protests against the harassment
of registered refugees, had sent out a letter to all provincial interior
ministries saying that their arrest was not permitted.
The
Afghan side will now propose an extension of the refugee identity cards to 2018
or 2019. Similar haggling has been played out since 2006 when the introduction
of the cards made refugee status a thing of eternal anxiety, limited timeframes
and livelihoods that could be terminated at any time. However, according to a
source close to the talks, the Pakistanis, “are currently very focused on the
repatriation.” Another said, “don’t expect a fast breakthrough here. Pakistan
does not want the refugees anymore, and the national action plan against terrorism
gives them a convenient hook to address what they perceive as a burden to
economy, society and security. The government does not want to extend refugee
cards. It wants to discuss how to improve the incentives for Afghans to go back
– and as soon as possible. At the same time, they know that they cannot release
millions of refugees back into Afghanistan. It is a dilemma. These talks will
take time.”
The
international community, too, will strongly lobby against ‘voluntary’ returns
on a mass scale. Such returns would destabilise Afghanistan (and need huge
amounts of money to provide returnees with at least initial assistance, one
Pakistani plan from 2013
was costed at about 90 million dollars.) It seems somewhat optimistic, though,
that there will be no hundreds of thousands of Afghans pushed out of Pakistan
any time soon. The UNHCR in Afghanistan currently plans for the return of
‘only’ 172,000 – registered – refugees in 2015. It actually budgets for even
fewer, for around 50,000, as there have never been more than 39,000 returnees
in any of the past few years, with an all time low
of 16,000 in 2014 due to elections and spikes in insecurity. “We are preparing
for other scenarios, too, though,” one staffer told AAN.
The
undocumented refugees – expulsion plans and search operations
Things
look much bleaker regarding the other issue to discuss: the fate of the around
one million undocumented Afghans in Pakistan. They made up the majority of
those who crossed the border back into Afghanistan in the last two months.
Because they have no papers and so form an anonymous, hard-to-grasp mass, they
are also the ones who attract the most suspicion in Pakistan. “We consider
unregistered Afghan refugees a security threat, that is why law enforcement
agencies have been directed to push them back home,” a senior official of the
Ministry of Interior told
reporters of the Pakistani Express Tribune 2 March. Forced repatriation is particularly
happening in the provinces that host many Afghan refugees. First on this list
is Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) where up to 900,000 – 62 per cent –
of all registered refugees live, along with a large portion of the unregistered
ones and the majority of the more than 1.2 million Pakistanis internally
displaced by military operations in North Waziristan. Large Afghan communities
are also hosted by Balochistan and Punjab, with 20 and 11 per cent
respectively.
In Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa province, trucks with loudspeakers mounted on them drove up and
down streets calling
upon Afghans to leave the country within three days “or face action.” Afghan
shopkeepers were asked to sell their businesses. The police continue to raid
Afghan dominated neighbourhoods and refugee camps (see for example here
and here), arresting
hundred of “suspects.” Operations often seem directed both at looking for
terror suspects and rounding up illegal Afghans, sometimes seemingly – or
deliberately? – confusing the two. Those who do not have valid paper have cases
lodged against them as per the Foreign Act, a preparation for deportation .
But
reports about police raids or expulsion plans for Afghans also come from
provinces with relatively small numbers of refugees such as Azad Kashmir (less
than one per cent) and Sindh (four per cent).
The Sindh
government, for example, has said it will launch
a campaign “to repatriate illegal and unregistered Afghan refugees by the end
of this year.“ Behind this is probably the war the authorities of Sindh’s
capital Karachi are fighting with Pakistani Taleban who fled there from
military operations in Swat or North Waziristan. Many of these commanders and
fighters have moved into Pashto-speaking neighbourhoods that are also favoured
by the Afghan refugee community. However, it is “very hard”, says Karachi based
journalist Omar R Quraishi, “to establish a connection between the groups and
to say with certainty that the one is sheltering the other.” There is no
concrete data to support this, he says. “I don’t know how sending the Afghans
home will help with our terrorism problem. Cleaning out the Afghan
neighbourhoods in Karachi is an indiscriminate action tackling everything
Pashtun and hoping to hit the right people.” It would also hit many women and
children who make up 80 per cent of the Afghan community.
Resentment
in the host communities
Operations
against Afghan refugees do not only have to do with the implementation of the
anti-terrorism action plan, though. They are embedded in long-term resentment
in the host community. Particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Afghans are blamed
for crime, unemployment and the persistent militancy. The UNHCR speaks of an
“increasing refugee fatigue.” One Pakistani analyst said it had been KP’s
provincial government that had put the most pressure on the federal government
to include the repatriation of refugees in the anti-terrorism action plan. The
province consistently shows, together with the Federally Administered Tribal
Areas, FATA, the lowest human development indicators and the highest youth
unemployement, while the refugee population, according to this UNHCR report
(p 42), is growing by 83,000 each year.
IPS news
agency, an outlet focused on development and human rights issues, collected
some voices for an article on 17 February about Afghan refugees. Reading
it, one gets an impression of the bitter feelings towards them and also of the narrative
that is being conveyed to the Pakistani public:
“About 80
percent of crimes in KP are committed by Afghans,” alleged KP Information
Minister Mushtaq Ghani. “They are involved in murders and kidnapping for
ransom, but they disappear after committing these crimes and we cannot trace
them. Therefore we demand that those having PoR be restricted to camps, and
those without [their papers] sent home.
…
According to Ghulam Nabi, vice president of the KP Chamber of Commerce and
Industries, Afghans run 10,000 of the estimated 20,000 shops in Peshawar; but
since they are not registered residents, they are not subject to the same taxes
as Pakistani shop-owners. … His department has been “urging” the federal
government to repatriate Afghans so locals can continue to do their trade. He
also alleged that refugees’ demand for housing has pushed rents to unaffordable
prices.
There are
different voices as well, though. The Chairman of the traditionally pro-Afghan
Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP), Mahmood Khan Achakzai, said
the mistreatment of Pashtuns and Afghans in Pakistan was “not tolerable
anymore. Afghans are our brothers and it is up to them to decide where they
want to live. If they are willing to live here, they are most welcome.” Khalid
Aziz, a Pakistani political analyst and activist, concedes that Afghan refugee
camps are sometimes used to radicalise people, but he also says “it is wrong to
generalise and colour everyone as a terrorist. There is a large majority of
good people who just want peace and safety.” His civil society group, Riport,
will in mid-March bring together the Afghan ambassador in Pakistan, Janan
Mosazai, Chief Minister Khattak and representatives of the Afghan community for
a conference to discuss how to bring back a better understanding between
Afghans and Pakistanis living in the province.
No mass
expulsion – but more ‘involuntary’ returns
For now,
it seems as if the Pakistani government has been walking a thin line between
trying to honour a Tripartite
Agreement with Afghanistan and the UNHCR which says the return
of refugees should be voluntary (by not – yet – touching registered Afghan
refugees) and still giving the impression to its own people that it is acting
upon the anti-terrorism action plan (by pounding on the undocumented Afghans.)
It is
likely that in this way at least another several thousand Afghans will be
driven back to Afghanistan until a solution is found under which the returns
can be stopped. It is unclear what such a solution could look like given that
no international agency speaks for the unregistered Afghans and the Afghan
government does not have much to offer to those returning – or to the Pakistani
government to keep them. Meanwhile, the number of undocumented refugees going
back to Afghanistan remains at a high level. For example, according to agencies
watching the border, on 27 February, 511 Afghans went across and an 28 February
513 people. The number of deportations of Afghans in February, compared to
January, rose again by another seven per cent, to a total of 3,047 cases. Until
the end of February 44,256 undocumented Afghans left Pakistan. The registered
refugees leaving only accounted for 7721 people.
What
happens to those who come back to Afghanistan?
What is
baffling, looking at this trend, is that most of the current thinking about
refugees focuses on those who are still in Pakistan. There is little mention of
the ones who have already crossed the border – or who will do so in the future.
Afghans return. They are in Afghanistan. And then what?
And then
– not much. There is little immediate assistance and even fewer long-term
reintegration efforts.
Many of
those who crossed the border in Torkham, Nangrahar, in the past two months
vanished once they were in Afghanistan. Getting almost no assistance, they are
now likely to expand the numbers of Afghans living precariously. Most were not
even given any documentation that would serve as proof that they were entitled,
for example, to Afghan ID cards. AAN was told that the staff of the local
directorate of the ministry for refugees had been asked to provide everyone crossing
the border with proof of their status, but this did not happen, allegedly
because the local authorities feared it would encourage people to stay and ask
for assistance where none could be given, posing an additional burden on the
local economy and land allocations. The governor of Nangrahar province has made
it clear that he did not want them in his province, unless they originally
hailed from Nangrahar.
Thousands
reportedly went on to Kunar, Laghman and Kunduz, currently very insecure areas.
Others went on to Kabul, hoping for help in the proximity of the powerful and
settling in already overcrowded informal settlements. But even in the capital,
there is not much help to be had. A United Nations summary of winterisation
efforts from the end of October 2014 said “the level of assistance in the Kabul
Informal Settlements will be reduced significantly,” due to an overall decrease
of funds as well as a “re-prioritisation” of funds. The latter is mostly
because of another refugee crisis: the hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis who
fled into Khost and Paktika after last year’s Pakistani military operations in
North Waziristan (a UNHCR update from 18 February details 42,031 refugee
families or 298,951 individuals registered; not online).
Humanitarians
now estimate that 40 per cent of Afghan returnees are “at risk at becoming
vulnerable” – humanitarian speak for families who may, for example, end up with
no shelter, little food and children sent onto the streets to earn money.
Underfunded,
understaffed agencies
It was
basically one overwhelmed and underfunded agency – the International
Organisation for Migration (IOM) –, along with the similarly understaffed and
underfunded Directorate for Refugees and Repatriation in Nangrahar (DoRR) –
that was trying to handle the surge in people crossing the border. The IOM has,
since 2008, been mandated with the assistance of returning undocumented Afghans
(while the UNHCR tracks the registered refugees – a small minority of the
current cases) and works at three border crossings – Torkham, Nangrahar
province, Zaranj, Nimruz province and Islam Qala, Herat province. However, due
to funding constraints, IOM’s Cross Border Return and Reintegration Program has
just been cut in half, and it has had to let most of its implementing partners
go.
“We are
down to helping the most desperate,” IOM’s head Richard Danziger said
recently. With the funds available, the organisation can assist about ten per
cent of the total caseload – 4009 people by end of February. For this, it tries
to identify the ‘most vulnerable.’ But who is vulnerable is a tough decision to
make, as nearly all returnees are poor, with most of them having many children,
no land, no business and few skills. One of the five border ‘screeners’ (the
other four are busy counting and interviewing returnees) watches the returnees
walk by and picks out people that look as if they fit the criteria:
unaccompanied minors, families that are headed by women, elderly, sick people
and so on. Only those are then offered some help – a night or two in a ‘transit
centre’ (ten rooms), a meal, hygiene or kitchen kits, a phone call if needed
and transport to the next destination. If people know where they want to go.
There is neither staff, nor money to provide any more help to any more people.
“Due to staff and time constraints, this is a rather random process,” one
staffer said unhappily. “There is always the question: how many are we missing
out on?”
“In the
short-term, we need more screeners and more non-food items to hand out. For the
longer-term, we need psycho-social support for the returnees,” she urged. “And
it would make sense to target provinces that get many returnees with shelter
programs and vocational trainings.”
A lack of
long-term reintegration programs
For now,
however, anything apart from the initial support at the border is a matter of
chance. There is no mechanism to hand over data or cases to other agencies or
ministries for following up. Some of the returnees – those who were
registered as refugees in Pakistan – can pick up 150 dollars as a “short term
integration grant” and an additional 30 to 70 dollars for transport costs at
one of the so-called encashment centres in Jalalabad, Kabul, Gardez, Herat and
Kandahar. But with a 50 kilogramme sack of flour currently costing 25 dollars
and a 16 litre canister of oil 20 dollars, this help might last them a month or
two at the most. (For years there has been discussions about increasing this
grant, for example “by a subsistence allowance for three months,” but this is
currently still at least “several months off,” AAN was told by UNHCR
Afghanistan staff.) Then, the assistance, most often, ends, and many returnees
join the ranks of the internally displaced (their situation is little better;
for more, see this previous AAN report).
More than 40 per cent of the altogether 5.8 million between 2002 and 2013,
“have not been able to reintegrate into their home communities, resulting in
significant secondary displacement,” the UNHCR said in August 2013.
60 per cent had had difficulties “rebuild[ing] their lives.”
The
refugee portfolio is a graveyard of ideas and promises to reintegrate returnees
back into society and labour market. A plan for “48 towns for returnees in 22
provinces” that then Afghan minister Jamaheer Anawari promised
in 2012 never came through. Another example is the Solutions
Strategy for Refugees that the UNHCR developed together with the
governments of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran in 2012. It is quite an
impressive read with its plans to create “conditions for sustainable
reintegration and reducing secondary migration” by introducing “multi-sectoral,
community-level programming” (well, at least in “up to 48 selected locations”).
But this programming has never really taken off. This was partly because of the
costs: the implementation of phase 2012 to 2014 in Afghanistan alone was
budgeted at more than 860 million dollars, and for all three countries, costs
were put at almost two billion dollars (for funding gaps, see also here). Other factors
hampering the implementation were the decreasing access to provinces and the
shrinking of funds for the region. Before the London conference, the most
recent Afghanistan donor conference (where no new money was pledged, see this
previous AAN report),
the UNHCR published a position paper,
saying that “The implementation of the next phase [of the Solution Strategy]
(2015-2017) will require reinvigorated engagement and support of the
international community.”
Reading
between the diplomatic lines, this means: not enough money has been pledged
yet.
It’s a
development crisis, not a humanitarian one
Here, the
Torkham crisis fits into a wider picture. With millions of people living in
displacement for years, sometimes decades, within or outside Afghanistan’s
borders, the situation is obviously not a humanitarian crisis anymore. It is a
development crisis, and it requires different actors to get their act together.
While humanitarian work is focused on fast, time-bound responses, the refugee
situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan needs more than such repeated replay of
short-term aid which creates dependency on minimal hand-outs that prevent
starvation, but is never enough to improve lives in a lasting way.
This
debate is part of the already mentioned Solution Strategy for Refugees. It is
also an integral part of Afghanistan’s new IDP Policy.
Both papers rightly suggest that hoping for return when it is unlikely to
happen anytime soon is callous as it just puts human lives ‘on hold’. It is
also unfair to the communities that host these displaced people, as unassisted
masses can become a burden on both economy and society. This is why
humanitarians want at least the option for refugees and internally displaced
people to resettle where they had fled to instead of authorities insisting on
their return. These areas would then need to be prepared for hosting refugees
so that they are not being plunged into economic and social difficulties. (4)
As the
Solutions Strategy for Refugees points out (p 29), part of this must be urban
planning, including irrigation and transport options. There should also be
livelihood projects and vocational trainings, credit projects, small enterprise
development and efforts to improve local governance. It would require youth
programs that help avoid unemployed, disenfranchised refugees and returnees
falling prey to recruiters of the insurgency. UNHCR, OCHA or IOM alone cannot
do this. Agencies such as UN Habitat, UNDP, the ILO, as well as governmental
aid agencies and NGOs with a development focus would need to step in.
AAN was
told that such schemes may be part of the negotiations that begin in Pakistan
with Afghanistan and international agencies on 11 March. Offering intensified
efforts might indeed help steer the Pakistani government away from more
deportations. Also large registration drives for the so far undocumented
Afghans will be part of the negotiations. Where the funds for such enterprises
should come from is unclear, though. There is some pondering to contact the
so-called ‘non-traditional donors,’ AAN was told. For Afghan-Pakistani issues,
the biggest are India, Saudi-Arabia and Iran. Of these, however, only
Saudi-Arabia has a more or less neutral relationship to Pakistan and might want
to help it out.
Meanwhile,
the number of people in need and on the move is growing by the day. There are
those nearly 300,000 Pakistani refugees in Khost and Paktika. There are more
than 800,000 Afghans who are internally displaced mostly because of conflict –
with the consistent fighting causing more displacement in 2015. Added to these
are the more than 52,000 newly arrived returnees from Pakistan. And hundreds
are still crossing the border every day.
(1) The
author compiled these figures from briefings kindly provided by the UNHCR in
Pakistan and Afghanistan (the agency tracks the Afghans that have registered as
refugees) and by IOM Afghanistan (that assists undocumented Afghans returning
to Afghanistan). Also all other figures were provided by these agencies, many
of them are not yet online. UNHCR Pakistan saw altogether 7,721 registered
refugees leave Pakistan and return to Afghanistan in January and February
(3,879 in January, 3842 in February) – while during the same time in the
previous year only 612 registered refugees left Pakistan. For the first week of
February it details 915 individuals crossing the border, for the last 1.061. This
means the number of registered refugees seeking repatriation, albeit not very
high, is not decreasing.
The
number of undocumented Afghans returning is much higher. The IOM saw in January
and February 44,256 Afghans return from Pakistan (this includes 3,074
deportations) – more than double as much as in all 12 months of 2014 (21,692).
Numbers overall decreased, but are now stagnating on a high level. In the first
week of February, 6895 returnees were counted, in the last still 4,409.
(3)
Afghan officials spoke to AAN of “progress and the return of some trust.”
Pakistani Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said on 19 February,
meeting up with US Foreign Secretary John Kerry, “I think Afghanistan and
Pakistan, working in close cooperation, will do wonders for the cooperation in
the field of counterterrorism. Relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan have
never been better, and that is a very, very positive development.” The army
spokesman had before noted
that “the intelligence agencies of both countries worked together [on the
investigation of the Peshawar attack] and we are very thankful to Afghanistan.”
(4) In Pakistan, similar projects are already being carried out through the Refugee Affected and Hosting Areas (RAHA) project, particularly focusing on water/sanitation and infrastructure. 2000 projects were carried out since 2009. As this program is spread over five years and five provinces, it is not as dense and intense as it needs to be to make a lasting difference for the affected communities